Symposium on the Ethics of Historical Research and Writing
The event brings together specialists from a variety of fields including history, philosophy, and anthropology to consider how history and normative ethics interact. The event is free and open to the public, and will be held at the Georgetown McDonough School of Business, in the Hariri building room 370.
March 20 @ 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Agenda at a Glance
9:00 – 10:30 am | Panel I – History and Moral Judgements
Moderator: Rachel Singer (Georgetown University)
Essayists:
Patryk Babiracki (The University of Texas – Arlington) – “The Ethics of Applied History”
Faye Sayer (University of Birmingham) “Doing Good with History: Definitely Maybe!”
Michael Douma (Georgetown University) “Why History Needs Ethics”
10:45 – 12:15 am | Panel II – Respecting the Dead
Moderator: Luca Barison (Georgetown University)
Essayists:
Travis Timmerman (Seton Hall University) and Kurt Blankschaen (Daemen University) “What Can We Reveal about the Dead?”
Timothy Newfield (Georgetown University) and Jordan Wilson (Georgetown University) “Understanding all that’s involved: destructive analyses of human remains in pursuit of interdisciplinary histories of diseases”
Elizabeth Weiss (San Jose State University) “Show Me the Body”
12:15 – 1:30 pm | Lunch Recess
1:45 – 3:15 pm | Panel III – History and the Ethics of the Written Word
Moderator: Patrick Grey (Georgetown)
Essayists:
Douglas Hunter (Independent Historian) “The Perils of Consensus”
Thomas Faith (George Mason University) “Burn This When You Have Read it: Author Privacy in Historical Documents”
Jaap Jacobs (St. Andrews University) “Navigating the Pitfalls of Double Blind Peer Review, and Other Aspects of Being an Ethical Editor”
3:30 – 5:00 pm | Panel IV – Moral History in Practice
Moderator: Mel Smith (Georgetown University)
Essayists:
Donald Bloxham (Edinburgh University) “Historians should take responsibility for the moral impressions that their works create”
Will Katerberg (Calvin University) “Caring for the Dead and the Living in an Age of Fracture”
C. Bradley Thompson (Clemson University) “The New Moral History”
5:00 pm | Closing remarks
Michael Douma, Director, Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics